The Keep:Gaming the Mana System
NOTE: In April 2018, Ethereal Surge was modified to remove the effect on mages, preventing the mana cascade discussed on this page. See GitHub Issue # 8860 for more information. JosephK9 (talk) 14:21, April 6, 2018 (UTC) : NOTE: Some of the material below is inaccurate now because Ethereal Surge has been modified to NOT give any MP back to the caster (initially there will appear to be an MP gain, but refreshing the page will remove it). This is discussed further towards the bottom of the page. : LadyAlys (talk) 18:19, June 5, 2014 (UTC) Have multiple mages in a party cast Ethereal Surge. The whole party never runs out of mana. In theory just two high-level mages can sustain infinite healing and other buffs. Joined recently and not in a party, so please correct me if this is an incorrect theory or already common knowledge. 22:51, March 11, 2014 (UTC) A fascinating topic! I'd always eyeballed the mage skills with suspicion, myself; it always looked like mages could use Earthquake and Ethereal Surge to create a Morrowind Singularity through exploding intelligence. Checking the mage skills again, however, I see that Ethereal Surge can only restore a maximum of 25 MP, meaning a loss of 5 is guaranteed. That means that it is impossible for a single mage to chain infinite spells. Two working together, however, can. Perhaps a thought experiment will help. Suppose you have two mages, each with 250 INT, meaning they'll get maximum Mana restoration, and 465/500 MP. (The exact numbers don't matter much, but as I envision it, they both casted Earthquake to get their INT past the 250 mark.) Mage A casts Ethereal Surge: A goes down to 460 MP (-30, +25); B goes up to 490 MP (+25). Mage B casts Ethereal Surge: B goes down to 485 MP (-30, +25); A goes up to 485 MP (+25). Mage A casts Ethereal Surge; A goes down to 480 MP (-30, +25); B goes up to 500 MP (+25). Etc. As we can see, at 250 INT, Etheral Surge becomes: "5 MP: every other party member restores 25 MP." When one of those party members possesses the same ability, it means you'll walk away with 20 more MP every cycle. And, since Earthquake doesn't have a limit, it means two mages working together can infinitely explode their intelligence until everyone gains so much XP per task that they'll hit Level 100 after a single click! (In theory.) Of course, this setup requires a lot of, erm, setup. The party would need to be very well-coordinated to ensure that every spell is cast in the proper order. Plus, you would already have to be a very high level to attempt this, limiting its application. Even with the Royal Magus Robe and Golden Staff (with their attendant class equip bonuses, meaning a total INT boost of 45), and even allocating every stat point into INT, even a Level 60 player would only have 135 INT. This would give them 270 mana, enough to cast Earthquake seven times for a final INT of roughly 185. On the other hand, math isn't my strong suit, and these numbers completely overlook both the Perfect Day Bonus and the possibility of two mages casting Earthquake on each other to shore up the numbers. In fact, now that I think about it, as long as the two mages had INT scores greater than 150 and started the cycle with a decent amount of mana, they could just add more repetitions to the above sequence so they could squeeze in more castings of Earthquake until they reach peak efficiency, and with max gear and the PDB, one could achieve 150 INT as early as Level 53 and begin the ascencion to omniscience... Never mind, breaking the game is easier than I thought. This is assuming my understanding of these skills is 100% accurate, which may not be the case, given that I am not a mage. Has anyone tried this? Can they confirm or refute my explanations? Waldere (talk) 01:40, March 11, 2014 (UTC) OP here. I see you started another topic on the Earthquake Singularity, which I also find fascinating - but in theory even without using Earthquake 2 mages with above 150 INT (or 3 with above 100 INT, etc.) should be able to provide an infinite mana battery source for a party. It does not seem like a huge collaborative effort to occasionally cast Ethereal Surge, since this strategy is not affected by cron (except through +10 mana freebie). If you add in Earthquakes, you can break the system a step further. If the above theory is correct, this could have interesting corollary consequences on parties: 1) Currently Healers seem to be the most desirable party member, followed by Warriors. I assume this is because most Habitica residents choose to be Mages or Rogues. However, by gaming the system with Ethereal Surges, theoretically only one of any non-Mage class is needed in a party (and would "only" need to be level 14 for access to the skills). 2) Currently many parties in the Archery seem to be very large (e.g. 20+ members, why I left my first party), so employing this strategy could offset some of the advantages of huge parties and bring them back to personable sizes. 22:51, March 11, 2014 (UTC) You can just set your character values, or create fake tasks to accomplish the same. It all comes down to you actually doing the things you're checking off anyways, so this isn't any more game breaking than what's already there. SlivaStari (talk) 00:04, March 12, 2014 (UTC) Haha, you have a point that game-breaking is ultimately pointless, but I see a big difference between faking character values and tasks on one hand and legitimately using skills on the other. Having multiple mages cast Ethereal Surge is breaking the Game without cheating the Rules. How I see it, if you don't bother to follow the Rules, you shouldn't bother to play the Game. But figuring out game-breaking techniques - that is all part of the Game! 03:56, March 12, 2014 (UTC) I completely agree with you, 50.190.188.112. Exploiting the game is pointless; manipulating the game is exciting! It reminds me of the card game Magic: The Gathering, which contains a large number of card combos that allow you to generate infinite resources, including some that are fairly easy to pull off and some that are extremely convoluted. Sure, you could streamline your deck to consistently churn out three-card kill combos, but it always struck me as more worthwhile to win with one of the unintuitive, unwieldy combos. And sure, you could just adjust your character values if you want some kind of mega-ripped demigod, but I much prefer the idea of transforming yourself into one through the combined efforts of a likeminded team. I feel the same way about the Ethereal Surge chain as I do about those infinite combos: they aren't just fun and clever applications of the game mechanics; they're a form of kinetic artwork! Poetic waxing aside, when I referred to collaborative effort, I meant in terms of the spells cast after the Surge battery is done charging. Given the occasional latency in the servers, unless you know your party IRL and do all this in the same room, it can be a little tricky trying to time castings of spells, especially with the mages running the battery. I guess it wouldn't be a huge deal as long as no one starts off close to 0 mana, but if you want to repeat this cycle enough to pump your stats TO THE MAX, you do need to communicate efficiently to ensure no time is lost waiting for other people to complete the next step. Even without testing the limits of the stats, though, you could run this loop to do stuff like kill any boss in one day by spamming Burst of Flames or Valorous Strength, or gain obscene amounts of gold by spamming Tools of the Trade. (Whoops, forgot to add my signature to my comment. Waldere (talk) 20:19, March 12, 2014 (UTC)) (I actually recognized you by your "voice," even before I saw the Tavern Talk message. Don't have anything to add to this conversation though, hopefully will someday level up enough to put this strategy into practice. 21:48, March 12, 2014 (UTC)) I consulted with another Habit friend of mine about this topic, a conversation which yielded two results: 1) He now wants to write a program to determine the lowest possible level at which two mages could carry out this loop and automate this process to see them go at it. XD 2) We realized that there's no possible way to prevent this.without rendering the Ethereal Surge unusable. Even if the highest amount of mana it could restore is saddled with a lower cap, all you need is more mages. Two mages need to restore more than 15; three more than 10; four more than 7.5; etc. To prevent a full party of twenty mages from abusing this skill, they would need to make the cap so low that the skill no longer has any utility for anyone. Pay 30 mana to restore, what, 2? No thanks, said everyone ever. Waldere (talk) 07:10, March 14, 2014 (UTC) Happy to see this discussion continued! And with a friend brought in to boot. =D 1) Rather than writing a program, designing an algorithm to solve this problem seems more intuitive, since it does not involve large data sets or recursion. Well I've decided to put my money where my mouth is and write said algorithm, so here it is: Where x = level, INT = Level Bonus (='0.5(x-1)') + Allocated Points (='x', we are assuming our mage is maxing out INT) + Perfect Day (='0.5x') + Equipment Bonus (='y', not determined by level) + Class Equip Bonus (='0.5y') = 0.5x - 0.5 + x + 0.5x + y + 0.5y = 2x + 1.5y - 0.5 I will assume our mages need 160 INT to perform this operation. (Possibly they only need 151? Unsure of the mechanics.) Then plugging in: 2x + 1.5y - 0.5 = 160 -> 2x + 1.5y = 160.5 What should y be? Well since x will clearly be a high number and our mage is industrious and thrifty, I will assume the purchase of the very best Mage equipment: the Royal Magus Robe (INT = 12) and Golden Staff (INT = 18). Adding those yields y = 30. Plugging that in: 2x + 45 = 160.5 x = 57.75 Therefore if my calculations and assumptions are correct, the lowest level needed is 58! 2) Hmm the only realistic way I can think of preventing this is to cap the number of Ethereal Surges any mage can cast in a day. To shut the complaints, it could be a liberal cap such as 3, 5 or even 10, since it would still serve the purpose of closing an infinite loop. 03:14, March 15, 2014 (UTC) Impressive work! He may very well still write a program just to simulate a party of mages ascending towards the statistical heavens, but I'll certainly pass along your results. I hadn't even thought of capping the number of castings. Given how much effort we've put into considering its game-breaking applications, I'm admittedly sad to think that it could all be toppled so easily. :p Plus, if any Mage skill needs to be nerfed, I think its Burst of Flames, not this one. It bugs me that that one skill makes Mages at least twice as good as Warriors at fighting bosses, which is really their only niche. But that's a different topic. :D (Though, now that I think of it, maybe converting Mage's to a system of purely Vancian Magic would solve all their balance issues.) Waldere (talk) 06:16, March 18, 2014 (UTC) Apparently I am slow on the uptake and Ethereal Surge now costs 30 mana without any refund to the caster. Hence mana gaming is no longer possible with only 2 Mages; we would need 3 Mages each with INT > 150, or 4 Mages each with INT > 100. I guess I will be lucky to see this ever happen. 17:10, April 1, 2014 (UTC) (disclaimer: not an April Fool's joke) D: Shoot. There goes my chance to do this with my teammate. I guess that skill is really only useful in a large party, then. Thanks for passing along that info. I'm going to check to see if the Mage Skills page is accurate, because that's a pretty important tidbit. Waldere (talk) 07:23, April 2, 2014 (UTC) It's been that way for at least four months. actually Breadstrings (talk) 13:51, April 2, 2014 (UTC) Huh. Well thanks for the info anyway. I have only been with Habit for a month, and thought I previously cast Ethereal Surge, but I guess I was relying solely on the (since edited) Wiki article for Mages. A cautionary tale on the dangers of employing theory without practice. 23:34, April 2, 2014 (UTC) It can be a bit hard to notice because the MP gets taken away after the spell. So it looks like it costs you 5 MP, but then the MP goes away later. actually Breadstrings (talk) 23:38, April 2, 2014 (UTC) Update: at long last my party has pulled this off (with 4 Mages). Viva la Game! 13:41, May 31, 2014 (UTC) Congratulations, 50.190.188.112! You're the most inspiring string of numbers I've ever conversed with. ;) Waldere (talk) 18:09, June 5, 2014 (UTC) @Waldere Aww, that is such an enlightened elementary compliment! I've had fun chatting with you; maybe talk again at a Habit meetup someday. 23:53, June 14, 2014 (UTC) Category:The Mage's Tower